Mere hours after announcing the Eagles would headline Summerfest's final night, officials with the music festival have announced yet another act for the Big Gig: John Mayer will headline the Marcus Amphitheater on July 6.

Mayer announced his summer tour in a Google+ Hangout with fans Thursday night. He released a new album, "Born and Raised," last year, his first to stay in the top spot on the Billboard charts for more than a week. But he had to cancel a tour in 2012 after a granuloma in his throat was discovered. It was the second time in two years it surfaced, but Mayer underwent a second surgery and last January was able to sing on stage for the first time since April 2011. | March 22, 2013»Read Full Article(6)

Pete Rose bowls over Cleveland’s Ray Fosse in the 1970 All-Star Game — possibly the most famous collision in baseball history. Rose was banished from the game in 1989 for gambling.

Baseball is as much about talking about the game as it is playing it.

Books about the game's heroes, controversies and inner workings keep the present connected with the past. And every year — especially every spring — they write more. | March 28, 2014»Read Full Article(1)

The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) has been extinct for a century now, but its afterimage still lingers in the American mind — and in the hearts of conservationists, ecologists and birders, who don't want to see another such species vanish from our lives.

How could extinction happen to a species of bird that numbered in the billions (yes, Carl Sagan fans, I said billions)? Naturalist and researcher Joel Greenberg will address that question Monday evening during a talk at the Riverside Park Urban Ecology Center, 1500 E. Park Place. | March 28, 2014»Read Full Article

Spring dance

To watch American Woodcocks dance is to see some of the goofiness of spring. The males be-bop around calling "peent," then shoot up into the sky then flutter down like a piece of paper. If you're lucky, you'll get to see this spring ballet when you visit the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, 1111 E. Brown Deer Road, Bayside, Thursday. A naturalist will give a brief program about the bird at 7 p.m. and then lead visitors to a spot where the birds are known to perform. Register by calling (414) 352-2880, Ext. 0. Admission is $9 for adults and $6 for children ($1 less for members). Dress for the weather and mud. Program will be canceled if it rains heavily. | March 28, 2014»Read Full Article

Late in Helen Dunmore's "The Lie," 21-year-old narrator Daniel Branwell tries to explain what Dunmore's entire novel makes clear: Although Daniel may have survived World War I, it will never entirely leave him.

"They say the war's over," Daniel muses during the false spring of 1920, as he readies the land for a new crop of life in his native Cornwall. "But they're wrong," Daniel continues. "It went too deep for that. It opened up a crack in time, a crater maybe. Once you fall into it, you can't get out again. The mud is too deep and it holds you." | March 28, 2014»Read Full Article

While properly billed as a fantasy, Katherine Addison's"The Goblin Emperor" is also a satisfying psychological novel about a young man thrust into the most difficult job in his world, uncertain if he has either the shoulders or the stomach for it.

The youngest, nearly-forgotten son of The Emperor Varenechibel the Fourth, Maia has been relegated for years to a remote hunting lodge under the guardianship of a brutal older cousin, because the Emperor disliked Maia's late mother. | March 28, 2014»Read Full Article

In the first, guests at the Capulets' feast are performing a mincing dance in the dark, within a conventionally bound world where no step is too small. Gutzman's awe-struck Romeo is suddenly bathed in radiant light, as he tells us that Juliet's beauty is "too rich for use, for earth too dear." | March 28, 2014»Read Full Article

The Best of Brew City is your mobile guide to going out in Milwaukee. Locate events, live music, bars and restaurants near you and in Milwaukee's most popular neighborhoods. Visit bestofbrewcity.com and download the app for iOS or Android today.

Poetry and music are part of "Reflections...on the War Experiences by Vietnam and Iraqi Veterans," a Readers Theater performance 7 p.m. Friday at the War Memorial Center, 750 N. Lincoln Memorial Drive. Dryhootch, the nonprofit outfit formed by veterans to support returning vets, hosts the event. A suggested donation of $10 will get you in; all proceeds go to programs and services at Dryhootch. | March 28, 2014»Read Full Article